Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Interview with Spanish Bombs

I have only once in my life bought an EP. And that was the Spanish Bombs "Brown Bag Demo 06". I felt it would be great. I still listen to it. It is still fucking great. Mother fucking destiny. Majestic destroyers of conformity. Chosen ones. They must fuck their groupies like thunder and cum rain. And the horde of men grows. Beasts, us Gods. BEASTS!! US MEN! US GODS! Soon the giant will be pushing daisy's. HAIL!

Thus listen...

www.myspace.com/fukresponsibility

So, how far have you guys been from home?

Light years

Galactic. The band seems always to be on a verge of collapse. Is it intentional? Like a homage to Black Flag, Iggy Pop et al.

I don't think it's intentional, probably more maniacal. We're all such good friends and we've been playing together for so long that it has become way more of an extension of ourselves, and the same reasons that have the band close to collapse relate pretty directly to our personal lives. We have an all or none kind of attitude.

Is Spanish Bombs the first band you all have been in?

I've known Timmy and Danny since I was 11 years old and we've been playing music together for about that long. We've been in 2 other bands together called To Each His Own and A New Enemy. Neither of which did any real touring, but we did release some stuff.

Do the lyrics spawn from real life, touring?

The lyrics definitely come from real situations and they can deal with a few of those situations at once, for example a song like Untitled/D.Boon's Grave has a bunch of different topics layered in. The first part of the song is about an ex girlfriend of mine and life in the city and the second part is about a group of vigilantes, called the Minutemen, that post up on the Mexican/American border and try to stop people from crossing into America, but also relates to my feelings as a fan of the band the Minutemen and everything they stood for, and how much disdain I have for those that try police other people. I like that our songs can exist that way, because that's the way real life is, my train of thought can change that rapidly and the words and the music should represent that.

The lyrics are dark and depressing but there is glimmer of hope. Why?

Well I would have to say that life is awesome and wack at the same time. On the one hand it feels like there are a lot of forces at work against people just trying to do their thing, but then again, our lives are in our hands. If I want something to happen then I have to work hard, that's the way it is, nobody is trying to make what we do easy for us, but that doesn't mean it's over. I've seen humanity in some of it's rawest forms and you have to understand that things can easily go both ways, bad things have to happen and they do all the time, you have to accept that.

What is the usual tour routine starting from the moment you arrive at the location where the gig is to the moment you are passed out/eating canned tuna at 05.00 am/jerking off at the back of the van/fucking a 45year old... something?

Nothing too unusual. Couple beers, couple buds, it doesn't take much to please us, but we definitely aren't afraid to get gnarly.

Where would you guys like to play and with who?

Bands that mean what they say and are down to party, i.e. Lewd Acts, Iron Age

What are some misconceptions that people seem to have about you guys just because you are in a band?

That's tough to say, I live in Brooklyn and I think everyone is in a band here. If someone doesn't want you to come see their band then they want you to come to their art opening. I guess it's bad to complain but after awhile the amount of crap greatly over rides the halfway decent.

Has there been times on tour when you guys have been literally scared?

One time we were driving through Arizona after a string of shitty shows and we stopped off to sleep in the middle of the night in a small neighborhood, we got out of the van near a field and there were literally 700 mosquito's there, we broke out and drove on, we pulled into an Indian reservation next to a car with all it's windows smashed out and a dude moaning in the car and cruised a little farther, J Rok ended up losing one of his boots and had to go the next two weeks of the tour through the south with Corona sandals from a rest stop. Not too scary but definitely an odd few hours.

Is there any strong political, philosophical side to you guys, or are you just living and breathing? Zen, so to speak.

We exist as we are.

The election. Thoughts?

I'd be surprised if any of us voted. I don't care what color or party the person in power is, big money has it's grips all over the USA and that's not stopping anytime soon.

What do your parents think about Spanish Bombs?

Having their son play in a punk band is any parent's dream, right?

Was when last time I checked. Speaking of bands. What did you think when you heard MLIW would brake up?

It wasn't a big surprise to me, I've been pretty close with the band for quite awhile(I even sang back ups on the first LP). But I knew they were touring a lot, maybe too much for them and they felt like they had done their thing hard enough and wanted to move on. I'm still close with them and I think they are probably pretty happy about what they accomplished, and they should be

Was Tim joining MLIW the reason that you broke up or did you just think "fuck it!"?

Pretty much, at the time we were sacrificing so much to try and tour and our record had just come out, it felt like there was so much in motion and it just stopped. But we didn't want to do Spanish Bombs as a part time thing and it wouldn't have really worked to try to do the band with Tim in Iowa so we just decided to stop, none of us were happy about it, but like I said, bad things happen, you gotta keep crushing

Why did you decide to start touring again?

Well we had kicked around playing some music together again and then we got offered to play Sound and Fury. We didn't want to commit to anything so we just went with California as being a test run for us, things worked out all right and we're still playing.

How was the festival like? Did people dig you? Other bands?

The festival was cool, it felt good to go out and travel again with the band. I think we definitely stuck out, and I bet a few people dug us, definitely want to give a what's up to End Of A Year for being the other weirdo band on the bill.

The new demo. What spawned it and how was it to record?

Well, "Old Ghosts" was actually a song we wrote before we broke up the first time and we actually played it a few times on the last tour, but the song went through a few structural and lyrical changes before we recorded the demo, the other songs were brand new. It's pretty natural for us to write songs together and we do, we already got some other stuff brewing too.

Where did the title, Beasts: Man Is God come from? It has certain satanistic vibe to it.

That was Timmy's idea, he's super into the Satanic bible and took that from it, I thought it sounded hard as hell and it's a powerful few words.

Is there a full lenght album coming anytime soon?

Like I said we have some stuff we've been working on and we've definitely mentioned an LP amongst ourselves, but nothing concrete. You might see another shorter release and then a full length but don't take my word for it

I think your first EP "Brown Bag Demo 06" is one of the best and most honest albums in 2000 so far. What are your feelings towards it? And can people still get it?

Thanks man, i'm still proud of the demo, in a lot of ways Spanish Bombs was our band to kind of break out of everybody else's thing and have our own and I think we accomplished that, it's important to us that we can be versatile and raw at the same time. The demo is now available on the B side of the Lifeline Records release that also contains the Chunksaah EP.

You have been influenced by...

Oh man the list is endless, from all the Dischord stuff, classic LA and NY punk, any and all Danzig. I guess some less obvious influences are Sam Cooke, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg and the Pogues, which is probably 85% of what we listen to in the van.

Ah, Bruce! I'm a huge Bruce fan. His holy trinity of albums: Born To Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Nebraska are to me the best albums ever made. Your lyrics have that same magical realism vibe to them. Just normal stories about life. How much has he influenced you lyrically?

Probably a lot haha. It's funny I guess, growing up in Jersey I always hated Bruce because everybody else loved him, it took me till 18 to sit down with one of his records, "The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle," to really get me hooked. I couldn't believe how human the lyrics were, honesty with no sugarcoat, like people get shot, people cheat, people fall in love, that's real life and there's something to be said for all of it. When I got my hands on the rest of the early records, i.e. Greetings, Darkness and Nebraska, it was a wrap, I actually got a Bruce tattoo too, "lucky young matador" inside my right arm. At this point I think all of us in the band are a little obsessive about him.

If a 16year old kid would buy one of your albums, what would you like him to get out of it?

3 comments:

I've been literally scared practiaclly every minute I've ever been on tour with this band.

highlights include being pulled over by d.e.a. border patrol on the arizona / california border, scaling some mile high cliff in wyoming with no path in sight, and any time i've had to watch jrok drink his own piss for money.

Friendship aside...Beasts: Man is God...is a fucking truly ripping and dense batch of jams. When I say dense I mean you can peel up layers each time you listen and never get to the bottom. That's soul music. Losing my mind to the whole set at sound and fury on a nearly empty floor made me wonder if I was surrounded by hundreds of retarded christian children or if my brainwires are fucked in the same way as the young men in spanish bombs. I'm sure it's a combination of both.